The Way of a Realist: A Study of Howells' Use of the Saratoga Scene

Abstract

William Dean Howells became the first great champion of realism in American fiction, not by setting out to reach this goal, but as the logical culmination of his own development as a writer. He began to write about his own experiences and observations in the natural course of his job as a newspaper reporter. Later as American consul in Venice he continued to record and comment on his experience. Fiction entered his writing in a mild way in Their Wedding Journey (1871), when he combined experiences from two trips, created the characters of Basil and Isabel March, and invented little episodes to enliven the travelogue. In succeeding novels plot superseded geography as the unifying element, and characters were more fully drawn, but his own experiences continued to provide the raw material out of which his stories were formed.